Pennine Way Day 5

Sunday 25^th August 2019 Horton-in-Ribblesdale

… after managing somewhere between 5 and 6 hours of sleep in total because someone had a watch that did a double beep on the hour every hour, I had breakfast and made a slightly slow start to the day.  The delay was because I had to wait for my packed lunch to be prepared.

This time leaving Malham I walked up the steep path to the left of Malham Cove, instead of going up on a road and around as I had on the Dales High Way.  A couple of guys passed me at this point, but we shuffled the lead a few times throughout the day anyway.  At the top the limestone pavement was huge.

A bit further on was the picturesque Malham Tarn.  For some reason I thought it was walkers only (as here there seemed to be many them) but I got to Malham Tarn House and found a bunch of vehicles where people had driven in from a different direction.  So much for me thinking it was a remote place accessible only by walking a long distance to get to.

It was another hot day, but as I went up and around Fountains Fell I stopped at every stream I passed cooling my wrists and cupping handfuls of cold water to the back of my neck.  At one stream I removed my shirt and dunked it in the cold water before putting it back on wet to achieve a cooling effect.  Then the views opened up to reveal my next challenge.

The ascent up Pen-y-Ghent was very slow.  I would walk 10 metres or so, then stop to regain my breath, only to repeat this over and over.  I would have thought that a month of walking would have made me fit enough to not have to have so many rest stops on a single ascent, but the heat of the day must have contributed greatly to how fit I was (not) feeling.  In hindsight, my lack of sleep for the previous nights would not have helped.

I ate a sandwich at the top and then made the long descent into Horton-in-Ribblesdale, arriving at the pub around 2:30 to drink a glass of water with ice, a (£2) can of coke, and then a pint of cider.  The two guys I kept “leap-frogging” showed up and they and several other people sat out in the back garden of the pub to drink.

I could have sworn the pub’s website said there was WI-FI, but they told me there wasn’t.  I guess I was mistaken.  I had vegetarian for dinner and hoped for a better night’s sleep.

Day 6